House lifting bill passes state Senate

Mar. 1, 2014

A house being lifting on Center Street in Sea Bright. / ASBURY PARK PRESS FILE PHOTO

Written by

Kirk Moore

@KirkMooreAPP

The state Senate again passed a bill to exert more state oversight on the house-lifting industry, in a new version of a measure that was pocket-vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie in January.

With bipartisan sponsorship by Sen. Christopher “Kip” Bateman, R-Somerset, and Robert Smith, D-Middlesex, S-942 passed the upper house Thursday and now goes to the Assembly.

To read more stories about the Jersey Shore since superstorm Sandy, see the Road to Recovery.

Only minor changes appear in the new version. It now requires contractors applying to be state certified have five years of experience operating home elevating jacking machine systems, and specifies any system meeting state and federal standards can be used. That erases any appearance of favoring one product over another.

The bill would require use of unified jacking systems, in which an array of house jacks synchronized by computer control slowly raises all corners of a structure at the same time. In announcing the Senate passage, Bateman cited cases at the Shore where houses being lifted collapsed, heavily damaging them and neighboring properties and sometimes injuring workers.

“This type of work has never been done here at this scale before and we have to take steps to make sure there’s proper oversight and that the work is done safely and correctly,” Bateman said in a prepared statement. “Elevating a home is a serious undertaking that requires experience and proper equipment.”

State Department of Community Affairs officials said about 1,500 homeowners who have obtained Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation grants from the government are in the process with contractors. There’s a long line of middle-class homeowners who want to apply for the next round of grants up to $150,000 to rebuild their houses higher, and much frustration over delays.

Still, lifting contractors see their industry poised for sustained growth after Sandy and amid uncertainty about the future costs and availability of the National Flood Insurance Program.

The original bill from the last session of the Legislature was among those bills left to languish past the deadline for the governor’s signature — called a pocket veto in Statehouse parlance. Lawmakers said they were puzzled, because they had amended the measure to include suggestions from the administration, which never offered an explanation for the lapse.